“God with His all-merciful eyes sees not who you are or have been, but who you would be.”

That passage from a 14th Century treatise, called “The Cloud of Unknowing,” states as well as anything I’ve heard lately the notion of ‘vocation,’ applied to both Christians as individuals and corporately as congregations.

The phrase formed the theme for a series of sermons presented last month by the Rt. Rev. Frederick Houk Borsch, retired Bishop of Los Angeles, currently interim dean of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. Bishop Borsch delivered the sermons to the annual convention of the Consortium of Endowed Episcopal Parishes in Pittsburgh, which I was fortunate enough to attend with three other members of our parish: vestry member Paul Carew, long-range planning committee member Jim Crow, and our rector Stephen Elkins-Williams.

The focus of the convention was on vocation, on how parishes are called to discern what God sees as “who you would be.” Bishop Borsch saw evangelism as vocation, and he challenged us as parishes to engage in evangelism in a couple of ways: As a parish, to “share our hope and faith and sense of God’s presence in our lives with others.” That is, we are to build up our local communities through the various ministries in which we are engaged. I felt some satisfaction that the Chapel of the Cross is doing this through our various community ministries – to those in prison, and students on campus, and through the Community of the Cross of Nails, to name a few. But I realized that there is so much more that God is calling us to do that we don’t respond to, either because we don’t recognize the call or because we don’t feel ready to respond.

The other way to evangelism encouraged by Bishop Borsch is to create new missions, to start new churches. I felt some satisfaction here too, because with our sister Orange County parishes we have taken the leap of starting a new parish in Orange County. But that initiative has a long way to go, and we must ask ourselves if we as individuals and as a parish are doing all that we can to nurture this new venture.

At the conference, I found much that related to our recent activities as a vestry and as a parish. In a workshop called “How endowments empower mission and ministry,” I learned that we can be much more intentional about building endowment, which at the Chapel of the Cross has been more of the ‘falling in our lap’ variety. Endowment is a gift from God, yes; but it also is a trust that we are expected to preserve and build in the pursuit of our vocation – of responding to our call as a parish.

At another workshop, called “Your Congregation’s Vocation: Discernment, Mission, Strategy, and Long-Range Planning,” there was discussion of the difference between strong parishes and weak parishes – between ‘maintenance’ congregations and ‘missionary’ congregations. In studying strong congregations, researchers have found that one defining characteristic is a parish vision – a clear sense of mission, of purpose, of call.

Do we at the Chapel of the Cross know “who we would be,” as Bishop Borsch asks? Over the past several months, that has been the work of the parish long-range planning committee, a team of 15 parishioners who are trying to envision what the Chapel of the Cross should look like over the next 15 to 25 years and how we will get there. The vestry has asked them to present a plan with long-range goals, strategic steps, and resources to achieve them. They will soon be coming to you, the parish, for your input, and we as a vestry encourage you to respond enthusiastically when asked to participate.

“God with His all-merciful eyes sees not who you are or have been, but who you would be.”

Please join me in prayerfully asking ourselves: Who would we be?